It’s true: for decades (well, at least since 2013), Guacamole only gained national recognition indirectly, via National Avocado Day, which was set for July 31 by the self-anointed authority of the National Day Calendar.
Note: The weather forecast below is real, though I’ve jiggered the format. And reposting it is a bit whimsical, but not a joke.
Among the most effective and non-brutal “crowd control” techniques for events like the coming DNC are: rain (especially with thunder & lightning); and sweltering heat (especially with lakeside humidity). Either one holds down turnout, “dampens” or wilts activist enthusiasm, and discourages media attention, all without swinging a baton or tossing a pepper gas shell.
But this week, the Chicago weather gods are on the side of the insurgents. I’m still expecting, as explained in this earlier post, that the police (and federal backups) will be (at least initially) more professional and skillful in dealing with protests; though anything could happen, and weather can change . . . .
But here’s the data, and some provocative images, to help pass the time til the big party starts.
“Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump told the audience at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago . . . . “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people. If not, we had more.”
Which Trump speech at the “same real estate” was not clear; the nearest was his inauguration on January 20, 2017, when he decried “American carnage.”
A federal investigation later revealed that original photos showing a sparse inaugural crowd there were altered to make the crowd seem much larger. NOTE: in the left photo below, the white spaces were all but completely empty:
By contrast, at the historic 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom”, at which Dr. King made his “I Have A Dream” speech, the crowd was huge:
The speech was about a dream, but the enormous crowd was real.
Trump’s often incoherent and untrue remarks in the press event lasted over an hour. Later fact checkers noted numerous falsehoods. This crowd size prevarication is typical, and easily exposed.
